PY: Get Account Replies

Full, runnable src of Get Account Replies can be downloaded as part of the PY tutorials repository.

Tutorial will explain and show you how to access the Steem blockchain using the steem-python library to fetch a list of comments made on a specific accounts content.

Intro

In Steem there are built-in functions in the official library steem-python that we are going to use throughout all Python tutorials. For this one we are using the get_replies function.

Steps

1. App setup - Library install and import
2. Post list - List of filters to select from
3. Comment details - Form a query
4. Print output - Print results in output

1. App setup

In this tutorial we use 3 packages, pick - helps us to select filter interactively. steem - steem-python library, interaction with Blockchain. pprint - print results in better format.

First we import all three library and initialize Steem class

    import pprint
    from pick import pick
    # initialize Steem class
    from steem import Steem

    s = Steem()

2. Post list

Next we will fetch and make a list of posts and setup pick properly.

    query = {
        "limit":5, #number of posts
        "tag":"" #tag of posts
    }
    #post list for selected query
    #we are merely using this to display the most recent posters
    #the 'author' can easily be changed to any value within the 'get_replies' function

    posts = s.get_discussions_by_created(query)

    title = 'Please choose author: '
    options = []
    #posts list
    for post in posts:
        options.append(post["author"]+'/'+post["permlink"])
    # get index and selected filter name
    option, index = pick(options, title)
    # option is printed as reference
    pprint.pprint("Selected: "+option)

This will show us list of posts to select in terminal/command prompt. And after selection we will get index and post name to index and option variables. We will also print the selection on screen for easy reference.

3. Comment details

Next we will allocate variables to make the function easier to use as well as provide a limit for the number of replies that we want to print. To retreive the replies we only need the author variable. This is then used in the get_replies function present in the steem library.

    # allocate variables
    _author = posts[index]["author"]
    _limit = 1

    # get replies for specific author
    details = s.get_replies(_author)

4. Print output

Next, we will print the details obtained from the function. Because we only want to print a limited number, we input the values in the form of an array.

    # print specified number of comments

    pprint.pprint(details[:_limit])

To Run the tutorial

1. review dev requirements
2. clone this repo
3. cd tutorials/08_get_account_replies
4. pip install -r requirements.txt
5. python index.py
6. After a few moments, you should see output in terminal/command prompt screen.